instant messaging

Harvard Busienss: "Unfortunately, these technologies are — to paraphrase military folks — inherently "dual use." That is to say, we can use them either to better focus on the task at hand or to multitask something else. Every university professor lecturing in America wonders which students are assiduously taking notes on their laptops and which are assiduously playing Scrabulous. Do professors really want to play "Big Brother" or block the digital deployment of their students', um, personal educational technologies? Of course not. And anyway, they can't — any more than King Canute could hold back the tide.

But what about when your firm is making an "agency-of-record" pitch to a much-desired client and the client's alpha-dog Chief Marketing Officer keeps pecking away on his BlackBerry while your team presents? (This actually happened.) What should you do?"

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Is it too soon still to speak of the Twitter economy? Yeah, just a bit. But you'd be wise not to ignore the new vehicles for spreading the word.

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